


Losing and Regaining Friends

by MrThirst



Series: Discord Drabbles [5]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Character Study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-23
Updated: 2017-05-23
Packaged: 2018-11-04 03:37:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10982541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrThirst/pseuds/MrThirst
Summary: Reinhardt dealing with the loss and reappearance of friends.





	Losing and Regaining Friends

  
It’s a hard thing to lose your friends, Reinhardt knows. Well... that’s quite an understatement, but for lack of properly devastating words: it’s very hard.    
  
It’s sobbing for days that you lost so many in one battle. It’s feeling numb to anything but misery and loneliness as you stand up at their funeral. It’s trying not to break down in front of all of their families as roll is called down the mostly empty line. More silences answer names called than remaining soldiers’ voices.    
  
Stay strong. Stay strong for them.   
  
Fast forward and there are more men and women who have his heart. They’re his family, Overwatch is, and he’d do anything for any of them.    
  
Genji leaves first, off to find peace in the mountains. Reinhardt waves him off and wishes him all the best, ignoring the piece of him that’s longing to keep everyone together this time.   
  
Ana dies. Reinhardt is winded by her death, physically cannot inhale in a world without her for what feels like years. He holds Fareeha in his arms as she sobs more tears than her body should have been able to hold. She cries herself to sleep on his chest more often than not until she goes to Canada after her mother’s funeral. Reinhardt can still remember her little hand squeezing his fingers on the car ride to the airport with her father.   
  
Gabriel dies. The whole base feels empty without him. He always greeted them all cheerfully. Reinhardt remembers people thinking it weird he should be so positive when he had such a dirty job. Jesse looks lost for weeks. He jumps any time he’s spoken to, looking around wild-eyed as if he had no idea anyone was around him. Probably true. When he tries to slip off in secret a couple nights before Overwatch is officially disbanded, Reinhardt is awake. He can’t sleep easily. None of them can. Jesse looks like a deer in the headlights when Reinhardt tells him to be careful, to take care of himself. Jesse creeps into the kitchen nervously, bag on his shoulder, where Reinhardt is drinking coffee. He wishes the caffeine were the reason he’s awake. They talk for hours about nothing, about Gabe, about everything. Then Jesse leaves.   
  
Jack dies. All of Overwatch cries out. He’s been the poster boy for years and suddenly the organization has no identity. It’s fitting, Reinhardt thinks, that he and Gabriel should go together. He can’t imagine what it would’ve done to one of them to watch the other be taken away. Still, losing them both, losing them with Ana, is an ache he feels deep in his bones. Lena sighs deeply, sitting on the balcony railing next to where he’s leaning on his arms. She says that Jack was the most intimidating when she joined. He was gruff, always sounding angry, and he never smiled. She says she even considered trying to join Blackwatch to work with Gabriel instead, but decided to stick to Overwatch. She didn’t regret it. Getting to know Jack through the strict exterior was worth it.   
  
Overwatch disbands. The remaining members shake hands, hug, cry, then go off into the world to live their own lives. Reinhardt is grateful Torbjörn invites him to Sweden without prompting. He doesn’t think he can handle Germany alone right away. He thrives on company, and with Torbjörn’s wife about to give birth to their second child, he thinks Sweden will suit him much better.   
  
\----   
  
Ana Amari rises from the grave only months after Winston’s recall. She strides onto the base looking older, sharper, and just as frighteningly beautiful. There’s an uproar. Everyone is incensed. She brushes them aside with promises of dealing with all of that later. First she wants to speak with Fareeha. They disappear for hours. Reinhardt isn’t sure if they’ll see either of them again that day, but they reappear shortly after dinner. Fareeha kisses her mother’s cheek and goes off to get food. Ana turns her eyes on Reinhardt. Eye. He wonders how she’ll snipe with only one. He must have wondered out loud because she laughs.   
  
“Never stopped you,” she says, smiling, and it sends him back all the years to before she died. She hasn’t changed much. She’s changed completely. He imagines he’s the same.   
  
Jack Morrison jumps in out of nowhere and joins them on a mission tracking a Talon agent. He offers no explanation and chastises them for asking about extraneous details while on a mission. They should know better. Lena punches him in the back and tells him he has a lot of explaining to do after.   
  
The agent their chasing, the Reaper, is Jack’s target as well. Reinhardt sees them up on a ledge he wouldn’t be able to reach quickly engaging in close quarters combat. He rushes to the bottom and manages to hear the thing growling at Jack. The voice is familiar. Jack slams the butt of his gun into the white mask and cracks it. It shatters, the pieces wisping into smoke rather than crumble like Reinhardt expected.    
  
Gabriel Reyes, made of smoke and missing pieces here and there, grins wickedly out from the cloak at Jack. From his communicator, Reinhardt hears Jesse gasp and growl and fire.     
  
He hits the Reaper--Gabriel(?)-- and it recoils, replacing form with mist as it glares at Jesse, at Reinhardt, at Jack, and vanishes.   
  
Jack tries to yell at Jesse later. Jesse only doesn’t beat his face in with his newly metal fist because Reinhardt holds him back.    
  
“ You got no right to yell at me for nothin’,” Jesse growls at him, tugging out of Reinhardt’s grip and storming off. 

It’s fine, Reinhardt thinks, watching Jack watch Jesse leave. Jack looks at him then, asks if he has any complaints. Reinhardt laughs, hollow and humorless. Of course he has complaints. He’ll save them for later, for after Jack’s explanation. Jack nods and walks away.

It’s agony to lose friends, and somehow worse and better to have them back. It’s better to walk beside them again, to laugh with them again, to be able to touch them, hug them, tell them how glad you are that they’re with you.

It’s worse, their return invalidating the mourning, loss, and years spent missing them. It’s worse as their ‘death’ becomes betrayal.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I saw a comic on tumblr that I think was supposed to be funny but it just made me really, really sad for Reinhardt. So I wrote this up! It is, like most of my work, Draft 1 and could use a little more editing, but I'm posting it anyway!  
> Not technically written on Discord or based on a Discord group prompt, but close enough.
> 
> mrthirst@tumblr


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